


baby i’m howell-in’ for you

by itsmyusualphannie (itsmyusualday)



Series: howlin' for you [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Meeting Past Self, Mindfuck, Phandom Spring Fic Exchange 2019, Swearing, Time Travel, i guess?, i still don't know how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmyusualday/pseuds/itsmyusualphannie
Summary: slapping your past self as soon as you see them probably isn't the best first impression. does meeting yourself even count as a first impression, though?“Jesus fuck,” Dan huffed.“What?” demanded the younger Dan, scowling up at him. “As if it isn’t weird to see my own face staring at me? But like, older and wrinklier?”





	baby i’m howell-in’ for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [t_hens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_hens/gifts).



> for the prompt: 'something with time travel.' idk if this counts but i had fun. it turned out...weirder than i planned, but hey, with my writing, what's new? thanks for the prompt! title from howlin' for you by the black keys.
> 
> beta'ed by [max](https://emikochauhan.tumblr.com/)!

“Honestly, I’m kind of disappointed.” Dan lay on his back sprawled across the sofa, his legs thrown over the armrest. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling very gloomy.

“Honestly,” came a voice from the floor, just beside and below him, “same.”

Dan’s limbs felt like lead. He never wanted to move. “Why are we disappointed?” he questioned the room at large. “You being here is like...a scientific breakthrough or some shit.”

“Because our brains hurt,” the voice offered.

Dan turned over the intonations and tone of the words in his mind. Privately, he thought that the voice sounded very different from recordings. It was pitched a little higher and a little more posh than he’d remembered. “Are you even real?” he asked.

“I’m fairly sure that I’m real,” the voice said, sounding offended, “seeing as you slapped me as soon as you saw me. It’s not  _my_ fault I appeared here. In fact, this is the last place I would have picked to appear if I had any say in it.”

“Right,” Dan said. “I’m sure some magic just picked you up and tossed you here. Magically. This isn’t even the same flat you live in.”

“Yeah, I think I _noticed_ that it isn’t the same flat,” said the voice. The tone changed to something curious. “Are you...still with…?”

“Of course I am,” Dan said. “You couldn’t tell, with the houseplants everywhere and the stupid socks on the floor by your face?”

“He never starts cleaning up after himself?”

Dan noted the dismay and resisted a laugh. “No, of course not. You’re going to have to clean up after him for years.” He let his head fall to the side, finally, his gaze falling from the ceiling to the body lying prone beside him and a few feet below.

His mind twisted, just like it had done a few minutes ago when he’d first seen it. It was his own body, a few years younger, and it was beyond mind-fucking to see it sprawled across the floor like a disturbingly realistic blow-up doll. The body blinked.

“Jesus fuck,” Dan huffed.

“What?” demanded the younger Dan, scowling up at him. His skin was smooth and tanned, darker than Dan remembered his own skin being at that age. “As if it isn’t weird to see my own face staring at me? But like, older and wrinklier?”

Dan reached out to touch the corner of his younger self’s eye. The skin under the pad of his finger felt unreal, almost fake where he could see the same lines, but smoother, on a face that was less than a metre from him. He didn’t argue with the claim that he was older and wrinklier. “You’re so...tiny,” he finally settled on. His gaze drifted across the narrowness of the boy’s shoulders and hips, and the tight shirt around his soft stomach.

The boy crossed his arms across his chest self-consciously. He looked abruptly hilarious, which Dan thought was ridiculous to think about himself. “Well, you’re...you’re…” He couldn’t find anything to say about Dan’s physique, so he settled for glaring at Dan’s jawline and then his ear. His expression twisted. “Where’s your other earring?”

“We don’t speak of the missing earring,” Dan said darkly.

“What the fuck,” was his only response.

Dan stared up at the ceiling again as if it would supply answers for the myriad of questions racing through his mind. One settled against the forefront of his thoughts. “I’m calling you Howell,” he decided. “It’s too confusing to keep thinking of you as me. My brain hurts.”

“That’s not fair,” ‘Howell’ protested. “Why do I get the last name? Dan’s _my_ name. I came first.”

The answer was obvious. Phil had used it on Dan too many times to count. “Because I’m older, that’s why.”

“Fuck you,” said Howell, sounding disgruntled.

“Want me to call you ‘Daniel’?” Dan offered.

“Ew.” Dan could see Howell’s face twist in disgust out of the corner of his eye. It looked odd - his own face out of his control. “Gross. That’d make me sound like an old religious pastor. No thanks.”

Dan laughed suddenly, helplessly, at the irony of his own voice saying that. He shook with the force of it, turning his face to the back of the sofa. It took him a few moments to calm down, and then he turned back toward Howell. “Just wait,” he assured his younger self. “Just you wait.”

“Well that’s not fucking ominous at all,” Howell grumbled. His gaze wandered around the room, still examining everything, and then it fell upon Dan again. His eyes lit up suddenly. “Hey, you should tell me the lotto numbers! Or something else important. Maybe when I go back I can pretend to be psychic.”

Dan stared down into his own brown eyes reflected back at him, wondering. “Hmm? Oh, no. That’s Phil’s thing.”

“Phil’s psychic?”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Dan mused. Howell’s face made a strange, believing expression. God, Dan couldn’t believe how gullible he used to be. He thought, with a wry twist of his lips, that Howell would probably believe anything Dan told him. But then, why shouldn’t he trust himself?

“Question,” Dan said. “How are you even here?”

Howell raised an arm over his head and studied his hand introspectively. “Huh, dunno. Why are _you_ here?”

“That’s not what I asked,” Dan said. “I’m here because Phil abandoned me to get groceries. I meant, _how._  Shouldn’t one of us like explode or something, being in the same time and place as the other?”

Howell considered that for a while. “Beats me,” he finally said. “I guess we don’t have to worry about it since neither of us has died yet.”

Dan didn’t remember being this...optimistic when he was younger. It was disturbing, these casual words, coming from his own mouth.

“Besides,” Howell added, “you’re thinking too hard about this. I was probably sent here by aliens or future scientists or something to solve the ultimate question.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Howell confirmed. “The eternal question of ‘is it masturbation if you fuck your past self’?”

“First of all,” said Dan, refusing to think about it, “I’m fairly sure that was a clone question. Like, is it masturbation or incest if you fuck your clone?”

“Don’t be so technical.”

“Second of all, it’s a moot point anyway.” Dan stared hard past Howell’s ear at Phil’s limp panda socks by the coffee table. “I’m not physically attracted to myself, probably, so I’m not going to fuck anyone, let alone my past self.”

Howell propped himself up on his elbows and was regarding Dan with a look that Dan recognized as horrible mischief. He knew suddenly why Phil would get that resigned expression whenever Dan did it, and he regretted adding that ‘probably’ in there. “Are you sure?” Howell asked, cheerfully.

“Am I sure what?”

Howell clambered to his feet in an ungainly flail of limbs, narrowly avoiding hitting the coffee table and then Dan’s forehead in quick succession. He regained his balance, leaning over Dan on the sofa, and grinned down at him.

Dan lifted his feet and pushed against the armrest of the sofa, sliding down the cushions away from Howell. Howell just followed him, that same sly look in his eye. A shock of dark hair fell across his face and he brushed it aside, tilting his head and smirking.

Dan thought narcissistically that he now knew what Phil had seen in him. Dan had changed so much over the years, and he liked his own body how it was now, but he couldn’t deny the base attraction of his previous, slender, practically-a-twink form. The tight, thin shirt that Howell wore didn’t help matters. Dan couldn’t look away from Howell’s lips and he wondered, bizarrely, if he’d started attempting to wear chapstick yet. Dan’s back hit the other armrest and he stopped, but Howell didn’t. He moved ever closer, then threw a leg suddenly over Dan’s waist and hauled himself onto the couch, straddling Dan.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan scoffed, his mouth gaping at his own past self’s audacity.

Howell’s weight was barely a thing. For such ridiculously lengthy limbs and lean muscles, Dan could hardly feel the body on top of him. Howell’s knees dug into the cushions beside Dan. “Don’t you at least want to try?” His lashes were stupidly long and brushed his cheeks as he blinked widely at Dan.

Dan wished the look didn’t have an effect on him. He’d _perfected_ the look, for fuck’s sake, but something still twinged inside him. “You’re a goddamn menace,” he said.

“I am, aren’t I?” Howell’s face split into a smile. Ever-familiar dimples appeared. Dan knew with sudden clarity the desperate urge Phil had described to him many times before. He wanted to dig his fingers into the dimples to keep them there. _What the fuck,_  he wondered. Howell was leaning closer, his face a whisper from Dan’s. “You know you want to try,” he said. “I _am_ you. I know what you want.”

“You’re practically a child,” Dan retorted weakly.

Howell rolled his eyes. Dan could feel the breath of his aggrieved huff. “I’ve had sex with Phil already, asshole. I’m not _that_ young.”

“You look like a fetus.” But Dan was succumbing.

“Do you want to kiss or not?” Howell demanded.

“Oh, whatever,” said Dan, and then he was leaning up, and then he was kissing himself.

It was pretty much what he’d expected. It felt a little like kissing Phil, with the absolute familiarity of it, but these lips moved against his in the same way that his lips did against them. Howell nibbled at Dan’s lower lip while Dan tried to do the same, and Dan reached to brush a hand against Howell’s thigh at the same time as Howell reached for Dan’s. It was slow, cautious at first, and then, abruptly, it changed. Howell softened under Dan’s lips, giving more than he took, and Dan took control of the kiss with an ease that made his head spin. He licked cautiously at the petal-silk of Howell’s lips and Howell parted them obediently, letting Dan enter. He could feel it now, the quiet urgency building in his stomach and the desire to thrust up against the weight of Howell. Dan’s hand tightened on Howell’s thigh and Howell made a quiet whimpering sound into Dan’s mouth.

_Ah, fuck,_  thought Dan despairingly, _I’m attracted to myself._

“Can I - ?” Howell’s hand had been sliding down Dan’s stomach but stopped just short of its destination. Dan groaned his approval into Howell’s mouth, his hand finding Howell’s and guiding it further down. The relief was instantaneous. Dan hadn’t realized he’d been so hard until Howell’s hand had pressed down against him. He ground up against the touch, fucking Howell’s mouth with his tongue. His stomach tightened, his eyes clenched tight. There was no way he would come this soon, and yet -

The front door slammed.

Howell stilled in his lap. “Oh,” he said, sounding mournful.

Dan opened his eyes. Howell was gone. Phil came into the room.

Dan opened his eyes. Phil was in the room.

“Hi!” said Phil, trundling past behind the sofa with his arms full of groceries. “Good nap?” He crashed into the kitchen, making a ridiculous amount of noise.

Dan felt heavy and unmovable on his back, on the sofa, on his waking from his dream. His stomach ached. _Lower_ than his stomach ached. His mind was still pressed up against Howell, tugging delicious sounds from him.

Dan lifted a hand to his lips.

They were still wet.


End file.
